Thank You for All Things (2 page)

Besides worrying about our education and Milo’s mental and physical well-being and me getting a complex because I’m not as smart as my brother, Mom worries about us running out of money. Every time I bring up the mail from downstairs, she looks at me like I’m carrying in a poisonous snake, wrinkles her nose, and says, “Just set it on the kitchen table,” where it’ll sit for days until she musters up the courage to open the bills.

It’s because of our money situation that Mom sold out and started writing Christian romance novels, even though her love is literary fiction
and
even though she’s an atheist who happens to be bitter about love. What was she supposed to do, though, after she sold her first novel,
The Absent Savior
, three years ago, to a prestigious press on the East Coast and it sold only four hundred eleven copies? It didn’t earn enough to allow us to buy a frikkin’ case of boxed macaroni and cheese, Mom said, so she scrapped her second work-in-progress and started writing Christian romance, which is where the big bucks are. She’s ashamed of writing them, so she isn’t using her real name, Tess McGowan, but instead uses the pen name Jennifer Dollman. Her advance-reader copies are still sitting in a box in her closet, unopened.

Last month we stopped by Wal-Mart to buy sunscreen on our way to the public pool—a rare treat, brought on only because of my grandmother’s sudden, not completely irrational fear that Milo was suffering from a vitamin D deficiency because he won’t drink milk and doesn’t play outside in the sun. Never mind that Milo doesn’t play, period, and
that there’s no place to play outside our apartment but the street, even if he did. We were almost to the checkout line when Milo happened to spot Mom’s Christian romance on a cardboard display at the end of the aisle. He pointed to it and said, “Look, Mom, your book!” He grabbed a copy and ran his fingertips over Mom’s pen name and said, “Jennifer Dollman, that’s you!” Some lady behind us in a T-shirt that had a picture of Jesus on the cross and the words
Follow the Leader
stretched across her chest heard him and got all excited.

“You’re Jennifer Dollman? Oh, my
gawd
! My book club is not going to believe this! We picked your book for next month’s selection, and I’m reading it right now.” And Milo—who may have an IQ of 180 but has absolutely no common sense—said, “Yes, she’s Jennifer D—”

Mom clamped her hand over his pale lips and backed away, but the woman rushed forward. It was as if she’d entered the rapture early, and she couldn’t stop gushing. She was on chapter seventeen, she said, and she “absolutely adored” the trials and tribulations of Mom’s protagonist, Missy Jenkins, and bless Mom for upholding the sanctity of marriage and not allowing Missy to be sweet-talked into sin by that good-looking philanderer Chase Milford. Mom quickly told the woman that it was a misunderstanding, her son only meant that it was the same book that is sitting on her nightstand. The woman started to protest, her finger wagging over Milo’s head. “But he said—”

“No. No. The author and I share the first name. That’s all he meant. My son … he’s … he’s learning disabled.”

Mom almost yanked Milo’s poor little arm out of its socket as she dragged us out of the store, Milo shouting,
“Learning disabled? You called me learning disabled?”
the whole way, the sunscreen left on the candy shelf for some
weary-footed employee to march back to the pharmaceutical department. When we got home, Mom sat us both down and lectured us about not airing our dirty laundry in public.

“Can we tell people that you edit academic books?” I asked, and Mom said we could.

“What about your articles? Can we tell them that you’re a travel writer?” Milo was referring to the many articles Mom writes each year, advising gonna-be travelers on where they should go and what they should see in exotic places like Shanghai, Bali, and even Roatán, that magical island off the coast of Honduras where many go on vacation, then decide to never leave. The truth is, Mom has never been to any of these places. She gets photographs e-mailed to her by a woman she knew in college who dropped out of school to become a flight attendant. She likes to brag about all the places she’s been by sending Mom photos. Then Mom researches the places online and writes the article. I rolled my eyes at Milo’s question. Milo should have had the sense to figure out that since Mom’s travel articles are every bit as deceptive as her Christian romances, they, too, would be off-limits.

Mom has a lot of issues, frankly. And, unfortunately, at least some of them began with the woman who just burst through the door. Her mother, Lillian. And although I don’t know if my grandmother is right and I am truly a bit psychic, I do know the minute she swoops into our apartment on this morning in mid-September that this visit is going to generate more than the usual amount of sparks.

M
Y GRANDMOTHER
stands as still as a soldier in rank, her royal-blue tunic floating around her as though it’s still responding to her morning tai chi movements. Lillian is sixty-two years old. She is tall and has chin-length hair, dyed to match the roasted-almond color it was when she was young, and it is every bit as light and airy as the clothes she wears. She also has big boobs and legs almost as good as Tina Turner’s. “Good morning, Oma,” I say, calling her the German name for Grandmother that she prefers because she likes the sound of it, even though she’s not German.

Oma leans down to press her cheek to mine, and her chunky fertility goddess earring clips me on the nose. Her
breath and hair smell like cigarettes. Oma is tense this morning—unusual for her—and she doesn’t look down at me when I try to tell her that Deepak Chopra has a new book out, even though she worships the ground he walks on. Instead, she looks toward the desk at the other end of the living room.

As always happens when Oma searches for anything in our living room, a cloud of distress darkens her hazel eyes. Oma thinks living rooms should be spacious and cozy, with soft woven rugs strategically placed, plants to breathe oxygen into the air by day and carbon dioxide by night, colors to support positive moods, and the furniture feng shui—arranged to let the chi flow through the room freely. Our oblong living room has none of these things. Its smudged walls are the color of a faded army blanket and filled with calendars, charts, and graphs, and the floors are scuffed wood, with only one rug, a rubber welcome mat, placed at the door to leave your soggy shoes on. The room is cramped with Mom’s cluttered desk, stiff-backed chairs, computers, stacks of books that never made their way to the leaning, pressed-board bookcase, tea- and coffee-stained mugs, and a vintage chrome kitchen table that Milo and I use for our work space.

“There you are,” Oma says when Mom straightens up in her chair after plucking the Bible—King James version—off the stack of books at her feet.

“Ma, is this important? Because if it’s not, I really wish you’d at least plan your stops for after four o’clock.”

Oma, never one to give long-winded verbal drumrolls before she states her business, is suddenly stammering. “Yes, it’s important. Very. I, well …”

Mom looks up, tucks an unyielding strand of paler-than-Oma’s brown hair behind her ears, and blinks impatiently.
There are purple pouches under Mom’s eyes because she’s not been sleeping well. Three times in the last week, I’ve heard her pacing late at night, then going out, the dead bolt clicking behind her, and coming back an hour or so later. The last time I waited until she returned, then got out of bed under the guise of having to pee, and we met face-to-face as she was coming out of the bedroom. Even in the dim light, I could see that her eyelids were puffy, her red capillaries a road map of misery. I called her on it too, because that’s just the way I am, and she got all nervous and claimed that she had an eyelash stuck under her contact.

Oma clears her throat and straightens herself up to her full five-foot-nine height. She takes a deep cleansing breath, then says, “Tess, I need to ask you a favor. A big one.” That’s when Mom’s cell (the only phone we own) rings.

Mom answers it and listens for a time, her mouth falling open in disbelief. She stands up and paces as Oma and I watch her and wait. “Run that by me again?” Mom listens and then tosses her head and flattens her bangs back with her palm until her eyebrows lift. “A notice would have been nice, for crissakes!”

Mom hurries into the kitchen, Oma and I following her, Oma uttering, “What is it, dear? What’s wrong?”

Mom dips her head to the side to hold her cell against her shoulder, then riffles through the stack of unopened mail. She picks up an envelope and rips it open. She skims the papers inside, then lifts her head and asks the caller, “How long will this take?” She mutters a couple of choice cuss words and tosses her phone on the table. Oma and I follow her back into the living room.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” I ask. She’s skimming four stapled pages, her face bunched with worry.

“Apparently the department of health caught wind that
this place is full of asbestos, lead paint, and about every other hazardous material known to man. They’re condemning the building until it’s cleaned up.”

Oma gasps. “Oh, my God! So that’s what those inspectors were doing here last month, when you thought it was only a routine check.” Her gaze sweeps over the apartment and she pulls me to her, her hand subconsciously drifting to my neck, as if she’s trying to keep the lurking toxins from slithering down my throat. She glances over at Milo, who has his head up, staring. I stare back at him. “Oh, my. No wonder that boy’s had so much trouble breathing,” she says. She keeps me tucked under her arm and hobbles me across the room so she can place her arm protectively around Milo too.

“We have to have our stuff out of here by the end of the month. They’re promising us relocation benefits for displaced tenants, but what in the hell is that going to amount to? And how long will it take to get it? Shit.” Mom’s face has gone the color of asphalt—the color of the “yard” she no doubt imagines for us when we are forced to move into a cardboard box. “I paid off my past-due bills and my credit cards with my advance, then had to run them up again, and it’ll be a couple more months before I see any royalties. Who knows how long these repairs will take. Shit!”

“Honey, your language,” Oma says.

Mom collapses on her office chair and lets the letter drop onto her lap. Her arms fall over the armrests and dangle limply. “It looks like we’re going to have to barge in on you for a while, Ma, though how we’ll all fit into your tiny utility apartment is beyond me.”

“You can’t,” Oma says, but there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of regret in her voice. “They’re changing the carpets and renovating the bathrooms in our complex. They did the
first floor last week, and they’ll start in on mine next week. I’ve already told them that I won’t be there. I can’t bear to be around all those horrid glue fumes. I could even smell them wafting up from the first floor, and they made my sinuses and throat burn like they were on fire. Lord knows what they would do to Milo’s asthma if he were there.”

“Oh, this is just great,” Mom says.

“It
is
great, honey! Now things will work out perfectly.”

“What things?”

“You and the children coming to Timber Falls with me.”

Mom stops blinking. She stares up at Oma like she’s gone mad.

“Honey … your father is dying. Your aunt Jeana called last night. She’s been taking care of him since his first stroke, but now she’s convinced that her Chihuahua has a brain tumor and she wants to hurry him back to his vet in Pennsylvania. Besides, she says she’s fulfilled her sisterly obligations to Sam and that if I don’t relieve her immediately, she’ll put him in a nursing home. He developed congestive heart failure after his second stroke too, so she says it won’t be long.”

“And this is
our
problem
how
?” Mom says, once she can close her mouth enough to say anything.

“Tess, I promised your father years ago that I’d never let him go to a nursing home if it ever came to this. That man never kept one of his promises to me, but still it’s important to me to honor mine.”

My ears are perked up like a German shepherd’s at the mention of my grandfather, because if there’s any topic Mom views as more taboo than her Christian romance writing, it would be the topic of fathers. Hers
or
mine.

“You’ve got to be kidding, Ma. You divorced that man
twelve years ago, and neither of us has spoken a word to him since. And
I
certainly never promised him anything.”

“No, you didn’t. But you owe it to yourself to go.”

“To
myself
?”

“That’s right.” Oma stands taller. “You’ve got unfinished business with him, Tess. And that unfinished business has ruined every relationship you’ve ever had.”

Oma is referring to Mom’s most recent boyfriend, no doubt. Peter. The man I hoped would become my dad. Peter is tall, built like a logger, and has sandy-colored hair just a shade darker than mine, so strangers would probably think he’s my birth daddy. He keeps it tethered in a ponytail that hangs halfway down the back of his leisure jackets. He teaches poetry and poetics—the analysis of the art of poetry, if your IQ score happens to be even lower than mine—at the university. He fishes, hikes, grows violets, and writes poetry, of course.

Every time Peter came over, he’d stop at Mom’s desk, give a kiss to the top of her head, or her lips, depending on which she presented to him, then walk over to our work-table. He’d come to me first, pick up whatever book I was reading, flip back a chapter or two, read me a sentence at random, then ask, “Where?” I’d close my eyes, turning pages in my mind until I found the passage he’d quoted, and answer something like, “Page one fifty-six. Fourth paragraph!” Peter would laugh every time, shaking his head in admiration for my photographic mind, and shout, “Yes! Yes! She does it again!”

Then, in the exaggerated swagger of a pompous professor, he’d move to Milo’s side of the table, take a haughty, comical stance, lift his finger into the air as he thought, then ask questions such as, “Mr. McGowan, 17.5 raised to
the power of 653?” or, “Mr. McGowan, what day of the week will it be on January twenty-fourth, 2046?” Milo would give him a swift, accurate answer, and Peter’s laughter would fill the whole room like warm sunshine. When the little game was over, Peter would set one Hershey’s Kiss with an almond inside on each of our palms, then grin with the pride of a real dad before heading to the kitchen for tea.